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Page last updated on 05/26/ 2017

El Goonish Shive is a contemporary fantasy webcomic, written and drawn by Dan Shive. It started on January 1, 2002, and was hosted on Keenspot since until early 2009, when it became independent.

The comic is broken down into a number of storylines, which are usually part of a long, continuous plot. Most storylines are short and follow only a few characters, but some are multi-part arcs in which the whole lead cast is involved. In five years of production, the internal chronology of the strip has advanced by only about a month.

Contents

Summary

El Goonish Shive depicts the lives of a fictional group of teenagers in their junior year of high school. They are subject to the trials of daily teenage life as well as more outlandish problems involving magic, aliens, parallel dimensions, and "superscience".

Content Warnings

The comic features tolerance related issues, including sexual orientations, non-traditional gender roles and lifestyle choices. As the main plot proceeds, the characters are shown coming of age, However, not all changes have been pleasant to the characters. Manipulation is shown in different forms, from the humorous to the dangerous. More dangerous to the characters is the direct mental manipulation by the invisible "Mastermind".

Releases

Keenspot has published two volumes of collected editions. As of March 2007, the first volume was the third best selling Keenspot article.

Reception

EGS was reviewed at the "Webcomic Book Club" in Summer 2004, where four reviewers came to very different conclusions about the strip's quality. Criticisms included the contemporary tendency for cast members to look alike, poor initial characterization, and overly verbose writing. A short April 2007 review in the comic zine Sequential Tart gave EGS a 7/10 rating. The review focused on the gags and jokes of the strip.